The present invention relates to a firearm safety and, more particularly, to a device and method for controlling, managing and monitoring the safe use of firearms, remotely using an external mobile device.
Many incidents have occurred where off-duty guards/soldiers/law enforcement officers have used the weapon entrusted to them in order to commit crimes, most often, murder or attempted murder, or otherwise discharge the weapon in an unauthorized manner. In addition, there are countless incidents in which unauthorized people, especially young children, manage to obtain firearms, often unintentionally (or intentionally) discharging the firearm. This type of occurrence is very prevalent in the home setting and causes many cases of harm to human life and wellbeing.
Numerous gun and trigger locks are known in the art, as well as several types of gun vaults. All of these devices suffer from several drawbacks, some of which include: a) placing the responsibility for safeguarding the weapon on the owner or user of the weapon and on their ability to manage the firearm safety issues; b) needing the owner/user to be physically present to lock or unlock a firearm; c) requiring the use of an actual key or combination—both of which can be lost and/or forgotten, d) are difficult to manage once more than one weapon is in the same location and, most worrisome, e) both present an easy opportunity for unauthorized people to gain access to such weapon.
Furthermore, the locks are generally designed for securing the weapon in the home. These devices fail to secure weapons in transit from a place of work to the home. Still further, currently available solutions do not provide any indication as to location and/or status of the weapon.
Remote locking systems exist in modified weapons. These devices suffer from the drawback of being specialized weapons where both technological and mechanical changes have to be integrated into the body of the weapon. This leads to an expensive and cumbersome solution. Un-modified weapons, which include the vast majority of weapons, cannot benefit from the aforementioned integrated technology. Furthermore, mechanically altering a weapon creates an operational issue because it adds an additional technological/mechanical feature that could malfunction when the weapon is needed. Such an addition to malfunction ratios is a major issue for weapon owners, private security and law enforcement officers.
It would be highly advantageous to have a device and method for remotely securing a weapon when not in use (e.g. when off-duty or when not under care if the owner), when referring to organizational weapons (such as private security and/or law enforcement) by a second party and not the only the user. It would further be advantageous to have a device and method for remotely securing any type of weapon, including but not limited to a handgun, even during transit to and from a place of work, when the weapon is being used in the line of duty. Furthermore, it would be highly advantageous to have a device and method for receiving reminders, additional data and information as to the location, and status of a weapon, including but not limited to: automatically, by use of default settings, by specific demand of the user or another authorized user. Furthermore, it would be highly advantageous to have a device and method for remotely securing a weapon, where the integral body of the weapon is not modified.